10,000 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Lure a Crocodile to Your Boat

Two Australian fisherman who saw a crocodile while out fishing are now potentially facing a $10,000 fine for harassing wildlife when they lured a crocodile to their boat with a fishing lure.

You can see the video that caught the attention of Australian wildlife officials below.

The men may be laughing in the video and probably never intended for the croc to grab their lure. But wildlife officials are not laughing with them. “We will be following up with the men to try and get further explanation of what they did and why they did it,” Australian Department of Parks and Wildlife Officer Peter Carstairs told ABC News Australia.

And they have a very good reason for taking the incident seriously. “It encourages abnormal behaviour with the crocodile, so they lose their fear of humans and get used to coming up close to boats,” Carstairs said. “It can lead to crocodile attacks in the future or us having to euthanize the crocodile because of people’s stupid behaviour.”

Because crocodiles are protected wildlife, luring the animal could be considered harassment of protected fauna, thus the fine.

Legal troubles for these men aside, I think we should just file luring a big, toothy predator to your boat with your topwater plug under the list of dumb things NOT to do while out fishing!